Save Your Smile For Me
by LegalAddiction20
Summary: OC Noe Yamakawa was never able to see ghosts, have any special powers, nor could she recall her past before she was seven years old. She has forgotten, but time will test her whether she liked it or not. Not sure which pairing yet. EDITED! Please review!
1. Chapter 1

Hi! This is my first story and it's based on a rough plot I cam up with while watching the episode. Reviews are loved and thanks for reading! I've edited some parts as I was reading through them and winced when I realized that there were quite a few mistakes. I apologise to anyone who read it before it was edited. PLEASE REVIEW!

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Noe looked on dispassionately at the beginning fight between her orange-haired foster brother and the group of skateboarding gangsters. Her arms were folded across her chest, one of them still wrapped up in a cast that was covered in colourful marker-made signatures. Her stomach growled angrily, impatiently reminding her of its much-wanted meal, and she sighed.

"The hell's wrong wit' you?" The first guy said angrily, standing in front of his fallen comrade to confront Ichigo. "You suddenly kick Yama-chan down and then you tell _us_ "Outta the way?"" Ichigo merely grunted in reply, his expression nonchalant.

"Say somethin', you little-" He was interrupted by Ichigo's foot and squawked before he fell to the ground, where he received further beatings. His three friends stood a distance away, stunned.

" Whoa, Toshirin's getting…"

"This is bad!" Ponytail-Ugly said, starting to shake.

"That's so messed up!" Fat-Ugly agreed. The guy getting beaten up by Ichigo cried out in pain with each hit, his face getting grounded into the basement as the back of his head got repeatedly stepped on. Noe wondered whether his nose was broken too.

"Quit yakkin'!" Ichigo shouted, expression angry all of a sudden. His clutched his fist tight, shaking with anger. "All of you bastards! Look at that!" He pointed at a fallen soda glass bottle with flowers in it, the water spilled all over the floor. Noe frowned, thinking that her foster brother was being a little too dramatic.

"Question one: What the hell is that?" He asked. "Yes, you in the middle!" The gangster who was indicated started and stuttered.

"Um, uh…a tribute for the kid who died here recently?"

"Absolutely right!" Ichigo gave him a huge kick that made him fly a few metres.

"Mit-chan!" One of the gangsters cried out, sweating profusely.

"Okay, then." Ichigo turned around and asked, "Why would that bottle have fallen over?"

"Erm, well, we were skateboarding and knocked it over…" Ichigo kicked them so hard that they flew back a considerable distance.

"Bastards!" He yelled, suddenly seeming to be on fire. Noe checked her phone for the time and saw that it was past dinnertime. While Ichigo was still busy and distracted, she shouldered her heavy school bag and walked towards the lamppost behind him. A little female spirit about ten years old with brown hair in two pigtails apparated behind the lamppost and peeked out of it. She died young.

"O-nee-san (Big sister)…?" She said, eyeing Noe's imposingly tall figure. Noe kneeled down until she was at eye level with the girl. Her expression carefully kept emotionless, she rummaged through her schoolbag until she found a pink foam-board rose that she had managed to make to her satisfaction in Home Econs today. There was even a short stem attached to it made of green-coloured crepe paper entwined over a piece of wire. She was planning to give it to Yuzu when she and Ichigo got home but decided that she had found a better use for it. Noe placed the upset glass bottle back upright and smiled a little to herself. She poured out the water and placed the rose inside.

"There. This is one flower that won't wilt…" The little girl's eyes widened in surprise and her face brightened.

"Thank you, O-nee-san!" She bowed. Noe smiled in response before standing back up to see the gangsters fleeing. Ichigo was watching them, arms folded across his chest like Noe before. "If I scared them _that _badly, they probably won't come back here."

He turned to face Noe and the young girl. "I'll bring some new flowers tomorrow." He said to the young girl.

"Thanks for chasing them away. Now I can finally rest peacefully, O-nii-chan and O-nee-san." She thanked them, smiling.

"You're welcome." Ichigo said.

"Don't mention it." Noe said.

Both of them turned. "Hurry up and go to Heaven." Ichigo waved over his shoulder and the little girl disappeared. He and Noe started walking, neither of them saying anything. Noe's stomach grumbled and Ichigo frowned. "You should start eating lunch."

"Don't want to." Noe replied, her voice enforcing some stubbornness. She didn't like eating lunch for some reason that even she herself couldn't fathom. It just made her uncomfortable; as if she was betraying some routine she never remembered having. Ichigo shook his head and kept quiet once more. It was already dark and the streetlamps were already switched on, illuminating the streets as they walked.

"We're home-"As they entered the door of the Kurosaki clinic, Noe saw from the corner of her eye a foot flying closer. She calmly ducked and allowed that foot to hit Ichigo instead.

"You're late!" Isshin Kurosaki cried out, withdrawing his leg and stood in front of them, his arms akimbo. "You two! You know our dinner is at seven every night!"

Ichigo recovered instantly and he roared, "Damn you! Is this how you treat your children who went out of their way to help a ghost on their way home!?"

"I don't want to hear it! Only punishment awaits those who disrupts our family time, no matter what the reason is!" Isshin shouted back. "Or what! Are you bragging that you're the only one who can see and touch ghosts?!" He and Ichigo started fighting, their arms a blur as they attacked each other.

"Shut up! I didn't ask for this power!" Ichigo replied.

"Stop it, you two! The food is getting cold!" Sweet Yuzu cried out, the rice-scoop in hand. Karin, her fraternal twin, sat opposite her and was ignoring the commotion behind her. "Let them be, Yuzu." She said and held out her empty bowl. "More please."

"But, Karin-chan…"

Noe adopted her foster sisters' attitude and seated herself at the dining table, picking up the bowl of rice in front of her, which Yuzu had prepared. She was starving and was not in the mood to entertain her adopted father; she gobbled up the food, which tasted better than usual.

"Noe-chan…don't you think you should slow down a little bit?" Yuzu asked, her voice concerned.

"I'b bine!" Noe chewed and swallowed. "See?" She added, to prove her point. Yuzu, partially convinced, turned back to her fighting brother and father. There was loud crash as Isshin hit the wall and Ichigo, enraged, pointed at his father.

"First of all," He shouted. "Making healthy high school students come home at seven every night is unimagin-"

"I agree with Ichigo, Tou-san." Noe said. Before Ichigo could continue, a blue ball of smoke appeared above his right shoulder.

"Ichi, you've got a new friend." Karin interrupted, her back still to him.

"Huh?" Ichigo looked up. "Wait, when did you-" He aimed a punched at the spirit. "I exorcise and I exorcise but they still keep coming, dammit!"

Karin finished eating. "Thanks for the food." She said as she put down her chopsticks. She turned in her chair to face her brother. "Ichi-nii has it tough being 'hi-spec'." Noe put down her chopsticks as well and watched Ichigo's frustrated attempts at getting rid of the new spirit. But all she could see was Ichigo punching at air. She sighed and placed her chin on her hand for support.

"But, you know, I'm kind of jealous." Yuzu said. "I can sense presences but almost never see them." Karin looked at her.

"I don't believe in ghosts and stuff, so…"

"What!?" Yuzu exclaimed. "But you can see them too, can't you? Dad and Noe-chan are the only ones who can't see them."

"Karin-chan does not believe in them." Noe said in, deadpanned. "Regardless if you see them or not, if you don't believe, it's like they never existed."

An imaginary strong wind blew as cold as winter. Yuzu stared wide-eyed at Noe.

"Noe-chan is right." Karin said. Ichigo and Isshin finally seemed to have stopped fighting as Ichigo relaxed.

"Dinner…" Before he could say anything else, Ichigo's legs were kicked out under him and Isshin pulled his arm up painfully.

"Your guard was down!" He shouted triumphantly as he sat on top of Ichigo. He was immediately sent flung away by his son whose expression was very irritated. Their fists ended up in each other's faces, with Isshin falling to the floor, twitching.

Ichigo wiped his face. "Forget it, I'm going to bed." He left.

"O-nii-chan!" Yuzu called out after him but he had already gone into his room. Noe sighed. "It's all your fault, Dad."

Isshin immediately assumed an innocent position. "Why!?"

"He's been having a tough time lately." Yuzu explained.

"Now that you've mentioned it, he said he's been seeing them a lot more lately." Karin added. Noe nodded for confirmation, her hand moving back and forth with the movement.

"What? He tells you three that kind of thing?" Isshin cried out. "He didn't tell me!"

"Of course not." Karin replied, straddling her chair and facing the other way. "Who'd talk to a father who's past forty and still communicates like a child?"

"As difficult as it is for me to admit this, she's right." Noe said.

Isshin choked and stumbled to the humongous poster of his late wife, hugging it and sobbing. "O-kaa-san! Lately, because of puberty, our daughters are being SO mean! What should I do?!"

"First thing, do something about this ridiculous house." Karin advised. Noe stood up, her stomach satisfied, and grasped her bag.

"Well, I'm heading to bed. Night." She climbed up the stairs as the other three wished her back and passed Ichigo's room. The thin slit of space between the door and the floor was dark so she assumed that he had fallen asleep before proceeding into her room. She sighed as she set her bag down on her desk and wondered whether she would be able to sleep peacefully tonight. The Kurosaki household was always so…lively.

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Thanks for reading again. Please review, because I seriously want to get better. Constructive criticism will be wonderful.


	2. Chapter 2

Hi again! I've managed to come up with the second chapter, so yay! I saw that I had 33 hits on my first ever chapter but no one reviewed except for **Ocean Wave Kira**. Thanks, girl! I'm honoured to be your personal Chinese translator by the way. Hehe. Well, I'm still hoping that someone would review. I'm _begging_ you people. Please, please review! I accept any form of constructive criticism. Isn't that how we learn to improve? I had to re-read my first chapter at least five times and I kept changing it at least six times because of all the mistakes I made :P

But I want to thank those who actually took the time to read my story anyway =D **Thank you**!

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Noe decided to abandon Ichigo the next morning and head to school early. She threw the apple she had been holding into the sky and instinctively caught it again, thinking. She had been getting a strange sort of feeling lately; a feeling of something that felt like a warning and which settled in the pit of her stomach, spiking up at moments and growing with each passing day.

Hatred. Thirst. Hunger. Want. Noe gasped at the sudden intruding feeling. _Delicious_. She cried out and tried to push the horrible thoughts out of her mind and into a closed box. _The wonderful scent of a being -no, beings - were close by. Hungry; she was so hungry. _Noe began to tremble, frightened all of a sudden. What the hell was this? A monster; she was thinking like a horrible, disgusting monster. She cried out again in pain.

As abruptly as it had appeared, the thoughts suddenly stopped. Noe opened her eyes that she hadn't realized that she had closed and stared in shock at the ground beneath her hands. It was quiet, peaceful and normal. The road was rough and grainy beneath her palms. Noe realized that she was kneeling and her apple had fallen out of her hands. She let out a shaky breath and looked around. Thankful that the road was deserted and that the curtains in the windows of the surrounding apartments were drawn and still, she stood up slowly and began walking again. The weird feeling residing in her stomach was skipping around her intestines and her stomach, making Noe feel slightly sick.

"Karin, pass the remote." Noe commanded, flopping down on the sofa next to Karin and Yuzu, in her green and blue pajamas. It was ten at night but she couldn't sleep. Her mind was racing and thinking too much for peaceful unconsciousness.

Karin didn't take her eyes off the TV. "No."

Noe gave an exaggerated sigh of annoyance, earnestly hoping that it would work. "Give it."

"No. I want to watch this soccer match."

Too exhausted to argue any further, Noe curled up against the armrest and closed her eyes. The darkness was slightly comforting but she was still too clearly aware of the strange and forbidding feeling in her stomach. It was spiking up high every five minutes and she held back a shudder.

"Where's Dad?"

"He said that he has another meeting and will be home late." Karin replied.

A monstrous roar suddenly sounded. Noe shot up, her mind suddenly alert, and Karin looked around in shock. Noe calculated the sound and realized that the thing that had made that sound was close by.

"What was that?" Yuzu asked from her place in the kitchen.

"I don't know." The anxiousness spiked up so high that Noe had to suppress another shudder when the feeling came up between her shoulder blades. Her mind was suddenly screaming "Danger!"

"Yuzu, Karin! Run!" An explosion from behind her sent Noe flying for cover, her hands reaching around for Karin who was next to her a split second before. _I smell so many delicious beings…such high reiatsus…and a Shinigami, how wonderful…_An alien voice chuckled in her head. Noe flinched at the mental intrusion, another headache attacking her poor brain. Karin, where the hell was she?

"Yuzu! Karin!" Noe staggered to her feet, holding her head in her hands. She noticed that Yuzu was missing and Karin was lying unconscious on the floor among bits of debris and glass from the TV.

"Karin!" Noe rushed forward, her legs still feeling slightly like jelly. "Karin, wake up!"

She looked up at the huge hole in the wall and wondered how did it get there when there was nothing standing behind it. But still, the feeling stayed strong. An unexpected force slammed against her and she screamed in surprise. As she landed heavily against the wall of the kitchen, her head came into contact with a loud 'CRACK!' There was a loud scream and then darkness.

"ICHI, RUN AWAY!"

Noe opened her eyes and wondered what was going on. There was a large amount of commotion before her and she raised her head to see.

She saw Karin screaming and her body was clamped together, as if she was being held by something. She gasped as Ichigo suddenly rolled over just before an explosion hit the ground where he was. She watched in shock as a young woman in a black kimono slash at air with a long katana and a shocking splatter of blood hit the ground out of it. The memories of what had happened before she was knocked unconscious came flooding back to her like a huge tide in the sea and she staggered to her feet. There was an unearthly scream. The malicious voice in her head was suddenly snapped shut.

By the time she was outside, an unmoving Karin had fallen to the ground, being caught by Ichigo.

"Karin! Hey!" Ichigo frantically shook his sister awake.

"Karin!" Noe hurried over. She fell by Ichigo's side, shouting at Karin to wake up.

"Don't panic." An unfamiliar voice assured them. "She's not dead. The Hollow hasn't eaten your sister's soul."

A flash of white-hot anger within Noe made her stand up and stomp towards the girl in the black kimono. "You!" She yelled in her face, making the girl lean backwards while Noe towered over her. "Who the hell are you and what the hell was _that_?"

The girl blinked in surprise. "Y-You can see me too?"

Noe breathed hard to avoid becoming violent for a little while longer. "Of _course_ I can see you." She said through gritted teeth. "Now tell me-"

"That was a Hollow." Came the reply. Noe's anger was momentarily thrown off-balance as she blinked in confusion. "He was seeking souls with high spiritual power."

"Is that some sort of tree…?" She asked, wondering whether she may have hit her head too hard before.

Before she could get her answer, there was another unearthly roar. _Hungry…I want to eat…eat some souls…_Noe flinched. Her ears suddenly felt as if they were being plugged and all she could hear was the sound of her heart beating frantically and that horrible distinctively male voice talking in her head. _Come to me, you stupid boy! _The voice was raspy, echoing in her head. She felt around her mind for some sort of key to lock out the pain and the voice. Her mind came to rest upon something small and shaped.

The voice suddenly screamed in pain, the sounds seeming to pierce Noe's ears and mind. She screamed with it, the sharp shrill sound feeling like spikes through her. Her mind seemed to lose focus of the object that she had found. The voice screamed once more and Noe clutched weakly at it, trying to get it to stop before her brain burst.

"Oh, what has happened to you, my child?" A gentle voice pooped into her mind. The very sound of it eased the shrill pain of the males' cry in Noe's conscience and she whimpered. "P-please…help me. G-get rid of it."

"Get rid of what?" The voice tutted in surprise.

"That…thing. The man. It hurts, Sir. It hurts." Noe tried to grasp that voice in her head, figuring that it worked as some sort of pain-killer towards that terrible man who was behaving like a monster.

"That, my dear? He is merely communicating with you, but is oblivious to it. It is like a room. It will always be there; it will never vanish from your sight unless you close the door, no?" Noe suddenly got a mental image of a light hooded figure standing in front of her. "So I can't help you unless you close that door."

She looked around at her surroundings. She was standing in a stretching bare field. Only she and the unknown man before her were the only the beings on it.

The man raised his hooded head slightly. "Do you really want to gain control, Noe? Do you really want to close that door?"

"Yes." Noe replied, confident and determined. She suddenly could imagine seeing the man grinning beneath his hood.

"Alright then."

Oh my god, that was friggin' long and difficult to write. I kept debating with myself about how the scene between Rukia and Ichigo should turn out. I have been at this from five hours. Yes, this is the undesirable cliffhanger. But isn't it more exciting like this?

**Next chapter:**

"_But first, you have to learn my name. Because only if you know it will I be able to help you." The man told her. _

"_So…what is your name?" She asked, cautious. Things like that always had a catch, she had learned. _

_The man lifted his head slightly higher and Noe could imagine him smiling a sort of smile that would've caught her off-guard. _

"_My name is…" He began. _

Again, **PLEASE REVIEW! **=D


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